


Audi Me

by NotQuiteInsane



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Displacement, Gen, angst (sorta)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 18:46:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteInsane/pseuds/NotQuiteInsane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a portal somewhere on Earth and Lucifer is drawn through to an alternate dimension.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Audi Me

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for an RP that I'm in, but I thought it might be interesting to post and see reactions. Please comment, tell me what you think of the scenario/writing style. Oh, and I gave Nick a last name cos he needed one. Please don't kill me.

            A twitch. A flutter.

            Light.

            So much light.

            Everywhere.

            Bursting through the seams.

            Always.

            Where am I?

            Eyes open.

            For the first time in a long time there's something else. Something besides the burning cold and frigid heat gnaws at everything, every nerve, every tendon every shuddering ounce of matter. But somehow it's worse.

            Where are the voices?

            Where are the Enochian shrieks of the heavenly host?

            He screams.

            He screams so loudly it turns to glittering static on the ether. Glass shatters. At least, it would have, if there were any left to shatter.

            So many screams already.

            This isn't the first time.

            He's woken five times already, but this is the sixth, and that's significant for him.

            Not quite him, he supposes, but him is as he is at the moment. And so him is how he shall stay.

            It feels like a millennium between eyes opening and the first blink, when really, it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. An eternity stretches out between those seconds, reaching endlessly onward. The universe turns in the eyes of an angel and he sees the world burn.

            How it burned. How it will burn.

            How it burns.

            Even here? Right where his Grace flows through his body and spills out into the surroundings, there is burning. Could those broken, flawed abortions not keep their hands off of one minutia of this planet?

            One speck of his father's creation?

            HOW LONG MUST YOU ALLOW THEM TO CONTINUE, FATHER?

            In that single blink, he sees extinction and irreparable damage.

            In that single blink, he flies over rivers and sees the dolphins, once so free and beautiful. But now? Now their skin is scarred. Their eyes are bleached. Their breath is clogged by acid air and they struggle every day to hang onto their very existence.

            In that single blink, he seeps into the forest floor and knows every cubic meter of soil that holds life and the smell of creation. At least, it used to. Now it just reeks of rotting decay, of glistening petrol, of human machines, chemicals. There should be life bursting from the ground, anointing the planet with its youth, but nevermore. The loamy soil has turned to dense, toxic clay, choking the life from every root of every fern and tree.

            In that single blink, he sinks into the waters of the world's oceans, breathing the salt water, and hoping for variation in the carnage. No such luck. Even in the vastness of the ocean, there are traces of oil and acid. Islands of plastic eject microscopic particles into the water, clogging the gills of fish and damaging the sensitive microorganisms trying to grow.

            I'M STILL SCREAMING, FATHER. CAN'T YOU HEAR ME?

            He closes his eyes again, this time searching, searching for the voices that should be there.

            Blank.

            There's nothing.

            How can thousands of angels go missing in a number of seconds?

            How could all of his brothers and sisters be gone?

            OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE THY NAME. WHERE ARE MY SIBLINGS, FATHER? WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER? WHY DID YOU NEVER ANSWER?

            Air.

            Breath seeps in, diaphragm expands. The temperature is cold, but it reminds him of burning. He burned for so long. He used to be beautiful, beneath the exterior shell of the vessel, but years in Hell have changed that.

            How long was he in the cage this time?

            A year--too short.

            To the end--not dead enough.

            Three centuries? Plausible, but not enough to explain the absence of angels.

            Three centuries topside? A couple thousand down below.

            But wait... where are the voices?

            Not his brothers. The other ones. The children. Those insufferable clouds of smoke and sulfur. Always in his mind, praying to him, asking for guidance.

            A hint. A mutter. More of a whisper, really.

            Relief.

            They're still there. Quiet, but there.

            Why is it a relief when he can't hear his brothers but he can hear the thorns in his side that are almost not worth the effort?

            Because you're not alone, a voice whispers.

            He shuts that's voice off in less than a heartbeat.

            Eyes open again. He can feel the pupils contract. The pain starts to recede to a dull ache in fractured bones. A flare of Grace fixes the cause, but not the symptoms and so the ache remains.

            More breath.

            He sits up and continues to breathe. He doesn't need it, but Nick likes the familiarity.

            No. Not Nick.

            The memory of Nick.

            He may have been a human, but he deserved respect. He was a good vessel, is a good vessel.

            FATHER, WHERE ARE YOU?

            Lucifer, The Lightbringer, gets to his feet and feels the world turn underneath him. For the first time he sees his surroundings. A room. A bedroom? A human's bedroom.

            It's not where he should be.

            It's not where he wants to be.

            A flicker and glass turned sand fuses back into transparent panes, fitting snuggly in their places. No need to leave a trace. The burned imprint of wings in the floor is enough.

            Lucifer stretches his wings out behind him into so many dimensions. They warp around him, sending him swirling into the in-between spaces, the void, the darkness, where none of his father's creations ever had the strength to grow. It's an immense pit of floating debris: the rejects of space and time that had nowhere else to go. A plane of lost toys, nuclear warheads, an island or two hover in stasis, tree roots digging down, looking for more soil, but finding none in the emptiness. A being such as Lucifer could see for eternity in this sort of place, but the blackness takes his light, feeds on the energy of his Grace. A step and he leaves the dimension, folding his wings--all six--into the vessel and landing back on Earth.

            A little motel outside of Detroit. But something is wrong.

            Everything is wrong.

            Where are his people?

            Years have gone by, but nothing looks any different.

            Nothing looks different when really, it should all be reeking of demon filth, but it isn't. The motel looks clean, orderly, as though it's been well taken care of.

            Where are his people?

            THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. FATHER, IS THIS YOUR WILL?

            He steps back into the void and then out upon a field of grass in the middle of an old cemetery. This is where the hole opened up. This is where he was thrown back in his cage. Every detail was seared into his mind at the passing of that moment and yet something is off. It's a feeling, rather than something he can put a name to at the moment. He looks around, scrutinizing every blade of grass. What is it…?

            The names. The names on the headstones are wrong.

            Same markers, same positions, but all the names are different.

            Why is everything so different? Where are the constants? Nothing in this equation is correct.

            A step forwards and the void curls around him like a malevolent embrace. The darkness of that place grounds him again as the pressure of energy drain begins to pick at his wings once again.

            Time to move.

            Beijing. He remembers when none of it was settled. In those years after creation but before the coming of man, Lucifer had wandered the wilds without boundary. Where once there had been groves of tropical trees, bamboo bunches and the slow grind of erosion still progressing at a natural pace, smog now covers the immensity of the sprawling city. Trains, cars, planes, and buses spew poison into the atmosphere, creating a noxious haze above the soaring pillars of concrete and glass.

            The urge to level the 6500 square miles of city is bubbling up from the base of his gut as Lucifer stands erect on the road leading out of town. The ground around him freezes solid and the asphalt begins to buckle and groan with the sudden temperature change. Clouds gather overhead and a low rumble of thunder sounds through the mountain valleys all around. If there were even a chance that the archangel could have stood there longer and planned the destruction of the great cancer before him without prematurely smiting the whole thing, he would have stayed. He barely manages to step back into the void before releasing a wave of pure light that obliterated everything in a thirty mile radius.

            It could have been a year. Maybe a few moments go by. All Lucifer knows is that he floats, letting the void sap him of anger and emotion before he changes location.

            A step backwards and Lucifer is beside a frozen lake. Not iced over, just still as the heart of a dead man. It is glacial melt water, cold as the deepest winter, but clean and clear. The broken things haven't settled this area. He wades in, fracturing the still surface, not giving any thought to the state of his clothing.

            It's a shell, nothing more.

            IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, HEAR ME. NOTHING IS RIGHT, FATHER. IT SHOULDN'T BE LIKE THIS. WHERE ARE YOU?

            Ten feet out he stops, water at his waist, and holds completely still. The water begins to still around him. The ripples that magnified and bounced out at incorrect angles glide to the far shores and cease to be. Looking up at the sky, Lucifer takes in the openness of it all, sees the mountains, the mother of the lake, sitting in its cradle of sheer cliffs, blue as an ocean, but groaning and cracking like the strain on the universe has taken its toll on just that single glacier.

            When the archangel looks down, he sees the surface of the lake, mirror bright and just as reflective, the glacial silt resting at the bottom an excellent background.

            Nick Calogera.

            That's all he sees when he looks down.

            What does he expect?

            Something other than blonde hair, blue eyes and humanity staring him in the face?

            It's a vessel. Not his intended vessel, but it holds his Grace. Just barely.

            Last time he'd seen it, though... it had been decayed. Rotting like the Amazonian forests: from the inside out. But now? Somehow his Grace is contained. His wings don't press at his back; they don't leave six bruised burns at his spine. His face isn't marred by the burns left by light and flesh warring within a single space.

            A wavelength splits.

            He screams again.

            Static.

            Static shining in every direction.

            The water explodes around him, leaving spaces in the air where his wings have slid through the cracks, through the spaces where matter doesn't exist. The celestial wave of intent called Lucifer, The Morningstar, is screaming. He is screaming to the edges of the universe, screaming for the world to hear the static and the feedback and the cacophony of his voice.

            Wings beat, crackling energy, gamma lowering to X-ray lowering to an ultra-violet wavelength trying to lower into the visible spectrum. There are reactions fusing and breaking out of nothing, trying to manifest in the space at Lucifer's back. His wings beat harder, trying to break the crystalline waves. One second they're made of feathers, the next they're glass, steel, pure light, sound made solid, molten lava, bone, diamond, paper. The transitions pause at unrestrained entropy, turning the frozen water to liquid, back to solid, then subliming it and sending the vapors out to the atmosphere.

            The inchoate feathers form, struggling to pull the angel from his prison.

            FATHER. HELP. HELP ME PLEASE. PLEASE, FATHER.

            Nothing.

            No reply.

            He's not coming, Lucifer.

            He's not coming for you.

            He's not there, Lucifer.

            He's not there for you.

            Shift.

            Realignment.

            A turn back to the void.

            Ejected back into the world, this time a caldera, frozen in time.

            Still frozen.

            Lucifer lies down and lets his Grace settle.

            A crack forms in dormancy.

            As the magma bubbles up to the promise of open air, Lucifer's eyes close and he hears his voice in something other than a scream for the first time in time unmemorable.

            "Where am I? Why am I still alone?"


End file.
